Vietnam Comments

some time in 2007

Ran into this today and thought it was funny so read it and tell me what you think.

I believe I wrote it for a playwriting class but I may have just written it to write it and have it all in one place.

So my father always used to tell me that Vietnam was that best time of his life. He would say things like “You know when I was a mailman in Vietnam, we used to sit up on the roof tops, smoke dope, and watch the battles, and every now and again you’d look up at a rooftop and see sparks coming down. That was a commanding officer coming to check on his men and them dumping their dope. But you see, I was never on a rooftop, I was always on the ground, collecting their dope. Now if you will excuse me, I need to go smoke their dope. At the end of the war,” he continued without getting up, “I came to my unit and said ‘well boys, we’re going home, and we’re going to have an inspection. So, anything you don’t want them to find you just put in this box right here.’ One man had some pills; there was a good amount of heroin, and, of course, all kinds of dope. Then I sealed the box, sent it home, and we never had an inspection. I miss that war.”

It’s funny that my father tried very hard to get kicked out of the army during boot camp and failed miserably and then when over there to spent the war sleeping with prostitutes and doing drugs. I wonder if the war shaped him or just exaggerated existing characteristics. He did drugs in high school, drugs in college, and even more drugs when he was drafted.

If you knew the pain this man has caused me then you would understand why I’m nothing like him.